A Terrible Weekend, But All's Still Well

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For good reason, you probably didn't spend much time thinking about the Texas Rangers this weekend.

Why bother with a June weekend of baseball when you had Dirk, Jet and J-Kidd making history down on South Beach? There's plenty of time to immerse yourself in baseball and only one chance to celebrate the first title in Mavericks history. Enjoy it, because even though the whole world seems to think Sunday night was about the Heat failing, it was really about the successful culmination of a long journey for Mark Cuban and company.

The Rangers will be here and they will be just fine when you get back. You might be feeling otherwise if you just checked back in on Monday morning and saw that the Rangers lost three of four games in Minnesota. If you haven't even gotten that far, Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram does a fine job of summing everything up.

These things have happened since the clubhouse opened [Sunday] morning: Mike Napoli went on the DL, Francisco Liriano almost threw a no-hitter, Matt Harrison was struck by a line drive in the left triceps muscle, Elvis Andrus was removed for a lack of effort, the Rangers lost for a third time in four games to the team with the worst record in the American League.

Sounds pretty brutal, but let's put all of this into perspective. The Twins have come to life after an awful opening two months and are fighting to stay relevant for the long haul at present. They're on a tear and the Rangers caught them at the wrong time. You'd rather it went the other way, obviously, but it happens over the course of 162 games.

You might also be concerned that Monday morning finds the Rangers just a game up over the Mariners in the loss column. Are you really going to lose sleep over a team that has been outscored over the season to date, though? The Mariners are several offensive players away from having a real chance to contend over the long haul and their pitching, while good, is overly reliant on a rookie (Michael Pineda), a reclamation project (Erik Bedard) and Doug Fister.

The Rangers still have, by a pretty good margin, the best roster in the AL West. There's room for improvement, certainly, but simple facts make it hard to sweat a bump in the road all that much.

So just enjoy the Mavs hangover for a little while longer. The Rangers will be just fine when you get back.